DRAM sales to plummet 55.1% in 2001

Outlook gets worse - but DDR picture is rosy

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IDC has followed fellow market researcher and Doom-sayer Gartner Dataquest and issued a dire prediction for sales of memory chips this year.

The numbers company reckons sales of DRAM will contract by 45.7 per cent this year, falling to $15.7 billion from last year's figure of $28.9 billion.

IDC's figures are quite as pessimistic as Gartner Dataquest's - it puts the collapse at 55.1 per cent, with revenue plummeting to $14 billion from $31.5 billion.

IDC's outlook for the longer term isn't much better: DRAM sales will only beat 2000's figure in 2005, at which point they will reach $29.6 million. The massive oversupply of DRAM and the parallel recession-induced dip in demand will outweigh any pick-up in demand arising from prices being currently so low.

The one ray of light in IDC's outlook - depending on which camp you support, of course - is that DDR will become mainstream in 2002, boosted by falling prices and Intel's support for the memory technology through the next rev. of its 845 chipset, aka Brookdale.

The result: by 2005, DDR will account for 75 per cent of the memory market.

That's broadly in line with Infineon's recent prediction that DDR will become the market leader in 2003, with just over 50 per cent of the market. ®